At the end of the year, Odaily started the "2019 Odaily FAT Blockchain Award" list selection. In the world of blockchain, in order to evaluate the status of a project in the industry, in addition to considering its model innovation, technological breakthroughs and currency price increases, user welcome and acceptance are also crucial. important indicators. As the voting time for the "Most Popular Blockchain Project" draws to a close, the results of the "Popularity List" will be announced soon.

On December 9th, the Odaily Chaohua community made a special plan, inviting participants of the "Popularity List": He Xiaoyang, founder of Lambda, Zhou Qi, founder of QuarkChain, and Dominic, contributor of Decred, to explain in detail whether "public chain 2020 can open a new era" ?”.

After two years of development, the vast majority of public chain projects have come to an end, including ONO, a star project previously reported by Odaily, and the saying that "the public chain is dead" has begun to spread. What kind of problems has the public chain, which has attracted much attention, encountered? Does the public chain have a future?

Several guests generally believed that the current public chain is not a dead state, and the technology itself is still developing. The dilemma of the public chain is insufficient demand and is also limited by the development of technology.

However, the cycle is not very optimistic about the current technical progress of Ethereum 2.0. "The main reason is that although Ethereum 2.0 uses many new and interesting technologies, in general, Ethereum 2.0 is actually a disruptive upgrade to Ethereum 1.0."

The guests also made predictions on the world changes and trends of public chains and blockchains in 2020.

He Xiaoyang believes that the environment in 2020 will be better than that in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Distributed storage will be initially applied in 2020. The combination of 5G and blockchain will make some changes in application scenarios, application methods, and business innovation. And development.

The following is a record of the community interview, organized by Odaily:

The following is a record of the community interview, organized by Odaily:

Q1: 2018 is the "first year of the public chain", and a large number of projects have emerged; but by 2019, most of them have been shut down, and there is a saying that "the public chain is dead". What do you think of the public chain projects? Current predicament?

He Xiaoyang:

People often like to define some things, and this definition is actually irrational in many cases. In my opinion, whether it is "the first year of the public chain" or "the public chain is dead", it is not very rigorous.

The concept of public chain is relative to alliance chain and private chain. It refers to a technology that has no access mechanism and is open source and open. It should also include multiple contents such as digital assets and infrastructure. The so-called "the first year of the public chain" and "the death of the public chain" are actually narrow concepts created by everyone. It has excluded assets such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. However, the current development of these projects It's okay, and it's not dead.

The narrow public chain here refers to projects that provide blockchain infrastructure to others after EOS. In 2018, a large number of projects emerged, and the market is very hot. You can say "the first year of the public chain"; now the development of these projects may not be optimistic and the progress is slow, and you can say "the public chain is dead". I can't accept this of. It can be compared to the Internet. There have been databases since the 1970s, but after experiencing the bubble, no one made good things. It was not until Jobs invented the iPhone that we really ushered in the explosion of the Internet. Public chain projects will also go through such a development process.

Having said that, the reason why everyone has a pessimistic view is mainly because even if they are too optimistic about the blockchain, they hope to solve some problems as soon as possible. Later, many problems were discovered and solved, and finally formed a contrast. What promotes the optimism in the early stage is also inseparable from the hype of some projects themselves. Any immature thing, after being held high in the sky; once the bubble bursts, everyone will quickly become discouraged and disappointed to the bottom.

To sum up, the public chain is not in a dead state now, and the technology itself is still developing.

Dominic：

First of all, I very much agree with Xiaoyang's point of view: "the public chain is dead" is a false proposition. But at the same time, the vast majority of projects have been shut down, which is indeed a fact. The reason for the current predicament of the public chain is that many projects at home and abroad regard blockchain projects as a kind of entrepreneurship. In this case, the blockchain project itself is very, very difficult, because it is difficult to have a decent profit model.

The public chain has the vision of a large infrastructure, but it does not have a profit model, which will lead to the gradual withdrawal of venture capital. The biggest problem is survival. Funding is a very important issue that many projects must consider first.

cycle:

cycle:

The saying "the public chain is dead" is actually more about exploring whether all new public chains in the future will be meaningless. We believe that the current market has a great impact on new public chain projects, as well as projects such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

There are mainly two reasons: one is that the homogenization is serious and they fight each other. Many projects claim to be a better Ethereum. To be honest, although Ethereum is occasionally congested, most people can basically use DEFI, so that everyone will have much less motivation to use these projects. Second, there are no new business models, including EOS and TRON, which are mostly used in gambling. Although everyone has started to build the underlying structure, we haven't seen a mature business model that can attract more external funds into this industry.

We believe that although throughput will be necessary in the future, at least it will not be a strong demand in the short term. In contrast, flexibility may be more important. Through flexibility, the interoperability of assets between various public chains can be realized, and mutual benefit can be achieved instead of being separated from each other.

Therefore, we believe that flexibility will be a very important direction for the entire blockchain industry in the future.

Q2: Since the birth of various public chain projects, it seems that they have paid attention to technology and neglected applications. What do you think is the biggest bottleneck that public chain projects encounter now?

He Xiaoyang:

From two aspects, one is the common bottleneck of all projects, and the other is the bottleneck of subdivisions (Lambda and Filecoin).

The common bottleneck of the public chain is actually very clear, that is, there is no demand. All technologies exist to better meet business needs, but there is a gap between the demand and supply of the public chain.

From the perspective of supply, Bitcoin has completed the supply of some kind of electronic cash, but it has only expanded to less than 1% of the human population; Ethereum has met the needs of many technical geeks to issue coins. In the future, what is the use of the public chain is actually a question we need to think about. Most of the time, we actually build a car behind closed doors, that is, we have made it, but we don’t know who will use it, and we don’t know what it is useful for. This is a huge problem.

The bottleneck of subdivision (Lambda and Filecoin), I think it is the technology itself, or the academic development of computer itself, which limits the progress of the project. After working on Filecoin for five years, the Lambda technical team stepped up its research and development progress, and now the storage function is on the inside and the storage function test competition has started. If the internal testing of the Lambda storage function goes well, we will launch this function at the end of the year. Currently, for useful storage projects, the technology itself is a bottleneck and a challenge.

Dominic：

I think the current bottleneck of the public chain lies in other infrastructure. As for the technology of the blockchain itself, I think it is not a big problem. As long as other infrastructure can be more perfect, the public chain project can be better developed.

cycle:

cycle:

Our opinion is: one is that the demand for applications is indeed in the early stage and is relatively weak; the other is that the blockchain experience is actually not very good for many, many users.

For example, one of the hottest blockchain scenarios this year is DEFI. If the user holds Ethereum, they can directly operate it. But if you are an ERC20 user, there will be many troubles.

The first is the handling fee. Users need to purchase Ethereum additionally. I have to explain to users what the handling fee is and why they need to buy Ethereum. It is too troublesome. In addition, ERC20 is actually like a second-class citizen on Ethereum. When it needs to do a lot of operations, it cannot directly call the default function like Ethereum. It must go through multiple steps to complete this operation, which is very uncomfortable. convenient.

We just want to improve the user experience in this regard, whether they are participating in DEFI or games, they can avoid some problems when using their own tokens.

Q3: Just now the three guests more or less mentioned that Ethereum will enter the 2.0 stage in 2020. How do the three guests view the innovation of Ethereum technology? What do you think about EOS?

He Xiaoyang:

Ethereum entered Ethereum 2.0 (POS, sharding, etc.), on the one hand, it improved Ethereum itself, because it was actually a semi-finished product before. On the other hand, the integration of basic computer theory and blockchain can also change the inherent prejudice of the outside world towards blockchain.

Previously, the outside world has always had a misunderstanding about the blockchain: the blockchain is a combination of some mature technologies and old technologies, but with the addition of tokens. And these things that will be used in the upgrade of Ethereum, I think they are actually close to the frontier of computer technology. Such a progress will cause the outside world to change the inherent impression of this field.

EOS is actually a semi-finished product, and many things in the white paper have not been realized. For Ethereum and EOS in 2020, I am relatively optimistic about the technology, but I am not optimistic about the ecology. I think that the etheric imitation ecology will not change much, and it will not be a revolutionary thing; EOS may have major changes, and the application scenarios will be better, but there are inherent problems that EOS cannot solve. But don't have too much expectation, after all, EOS has let everyone down many times.

Dominic：

Since I started mining in 2017, I have been following some changes in the Ethereum protocol. For the protocol of Ethereum's transition to 2.0, I am more supportive. But I think the biggest problem with Ethereum is that it needs to solve a problem of community governance.

We all know that the community governance of Bitcoin and Ethereum is relatively chaotic, and there is no good and complete system to allow users to make a choice for the future direction of the project. This leads to a very long timeline for both Bitcoin and Ethereum when they transition to new consensus rules.

cycle:

cycle:

I am personally familiar with Ethereum 2.0, and I often communicate with them in the developer community. But I am not very optimistic about the current technical progress of Ethereum 2.0.

The main reason is that although Ethereum 2.0 uses many new and interesting technologies, overall, Ethereum 2.0 is actually a destructive upgrade to Ethereum 1.0.

During the upgrade process, it will wipe out many existing things. For example, abandoning all miners, I think this is actually a loss to the Ethereum community. Furthermore, it will make many assumptions about the network model, such as the overhead of many operations. In this case, existing DAPPs may not necessarily be able to run under Ethereum 2.0. At the same time, some existing development tools and exchange interfaces have to be redesigned in the Ethereum 2.0 era.

I personally think that the community has already laid out these infrastructures, and it would be a pity if they were all abandoned.

In addition, the upgrade of Ethereum 2.0 directly discards backward compatibility. When you regard Ethereum as a computer system, many operating systems (Windows), they will not abandon all these previous applications or interfaces at once, but gradually transition to maintain backward compatibility as much as possible.

My personal suggestion to Ethereum is to treat Ethereum 1.0 as a shard chain of 2.0, and maintain most of the current interfaces and its mining consensus, so as to reduce the damage to the current 1.0. At the same time, it also enables 1.0 users to enjoy the additional benefits brought by 2.0, such as cross-shard communication. Completely abandoning Ethereum 1.0 will have a great impact on all aspects of the entire community.

Q4: In fact, there is a saying that the alliance chain is more likely to be favored by the country. What do the three guests think? Going back to the topic that everyone may be most concerned about, what is the future and development direction of the public chain? Although all roads lead to Rome, what are the differences between the three guests' roads to "Rome"?

He Xiaoyang:

There are several details in the speech in the People’s Daily: first, the topic of the alliance chain was not mentioned in the speech, they have always used the blockchain; second, the concept of value chain and digital assets was mentioned. So I think the speech did not focus on the alliance chain or the public chain, but the subsequent interpretation is indeed a bit biased towards the alliance chain.

The People's Daily Supplement mentioned that the country should be more inclined to the Development Alliance. In fact, I personally don't agree with this view. The alliance chain has problems with the alliance chain.

Alliance chain is a risk-free thing. It is a technology that may improve existing user services and government services, including interoperability between various systems. But I think that's actually one of its usage scenarios. But in fact, I think the alliance chain is not enough to complete our current challenges, nor is it enough to achieve our historical mission.

Why is blockchain needed? First, digital currency may change the currency status of the world dollar, but it is impossible to achieve it through the alliance chain. Second, the blockchain implements a new distribution method. For the POW consensus mechanism, it is a distribution according to work. Both of these are the role of the blockchain, one is realistic and the other is abstract. No matter from which point of view, the alliance chain cannot do it.

Regarding the outlet and development direction of the public chain, I think it must be better than them. Scenarios and problems that cannot be realized by the alliance chain can be solved through the technology of the public chain. We can also have more say in these scenes. So this is also the first thing I think Lambda does. We are trying to win many business opportunities that cannot be realized using the alliance chain. For example, problems that cannot be solved using technologies such as fabric.

For example, the public security system requires the circulation of file files, and the alliance chain has no way to confirm the originality of the data. So we need some kind of storage system, and the chain can prove that the original data has not been tampered with. That's some of the properties that are needed.

Second, more public chains may still need to go overseas, or need to find more public usage scenarios. The first is to wait for the opportunity, and the second is to do more TO B business.

Dominic：

I think the attributes of this alliance chain have determined that it is more suitable for smoother collaboration between institutions. Regardless of countries or large groups, they all have a tendency to choose.

For this development direction of the public chain, I tend to choose wisely. That is to say, the right to choose the future direction is handed over to the community and users. The disadvantages of doing so are actually obvious. For most users, he does not have the ability to exercise power correctly. That is, most users cannot put forward a constructive opinion on the project.

cycle:

cycle:

I think that blockchain technology or public chain will become a national strategy. For example, some countries in Eastern Europe use nuclear power plants to mine, and it is legal for Iran to allow bitcoin mining. Mastering the voice of the public chain is an important direction for the development of the public chain. Second, I think that the public chain in a certain sense in the future can be said to be a chain with weak centralization or multi-centralization. Facebook, has already leapfrogged in this direction. They invite 100 cooperative alliances, and then work together to maintain Libra's ledger.

Another consideration is flexibility. The public chain should not just adopt a fixed ledger or transaction model. For example, Libra adopts a fixed ledger and transaction model, so I can predict that when there will be some new needs in the future, Libra will encounter great obstacles to adapt to these new financial needs. Just like the process of upgrading from Ethereum 1.0 to 2.0.

The development direction of the public chain in the future, I think first, will become a national strategy. Second, it will exist in a weakly centralized manner, and will have stronger protection against some laws and regulations. Third, there will be a higher requirement for technology.

Q5: What changes and trends may there be in the world of public chains and blockchains in 2020?

He Xiaoyang:

I think the world is inherently unpredictable, it's a chaotic system. Since everyone wants to challenge the difficulty, let me share my point of view. I think there will be several changes in 2020, and I think the environment in 2020 will be better than 2017, 2018, and 2019. Looking at the development of our country, the first is to protect entrepreneurs, including entrepreneurs, and the second is the lessons of history. The blockchain industry is a pragmatic industry. Although there are many places that cannot be implemented now, it is not a illusory thing. It is a mixed product of economy, finance, and technology. These things are relatively practical. I am relatively optimistic about 2020.

Second, in fact, the popularity of blockchain has spread from technology geeks to more groups, from the United States and China to Japan, South Korea, Latin America, Turkey and many other countries, so relatively speaking, it The first wave of basic education has been completed. So relatively speaking, in 2020, there will not be many new terms coming out. Relatively speaking, I think it is more about the improvement of things that have not been done well or done before.

The third point, I think with the development of technology itself, there will be more business development with the development of user experience.

Fourth, I think distributed storage will be initially applied in 2020.

Fifth, the combination of 5G and blockchain will make some changes and developments in application scenarios, application methods, and business innovation.

Sixth, everyone can develop in a good environment, and projects that can persist will have a very good development in the future.

Dominic：

cycle:

cycle:

In my opinion, it can actually be predicted that in 2020 there will be more and more upper-level one direction. Whether it is a country or a large enterprise organization, it will be more actively involved in the construction of this blockchain network.

Second, what I want to say is that I think the entire blockchain industry will be more mature. For example, exchanges will be more strict and formal. At the same time, the traditional mature business of the blockchain will also flourish.

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Summarize

Standing at the end of the year, you will see more clearly that this year is also the stage when blockchain entrepreneurs have truly entered the stage of competition and elimination. Only by concentrating the energy of everyone can the project go far. In this world, support is consensus, and enthusiasm is strength. We look forward to blockchain entrepreneurs delivering an answer in their minds when the chill begins to appear at the end of the year.

This will be a list with an eye toward the future. It is also where the blockchain value consensus lies.